


Think Like A Woman (the Found Family remix)

by tielan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Family, Gen, Grief, Love, Missing Scene, Motherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-13 04:57:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4508664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andromeda Tonks née Black has been staying out of fights all her life – from the day she decided she would marry Teddy Tonks and her family and their blooded expectations be damned, through the day she realised her family would never again see her as one of them – at Uncle Arcturus’ funeral with Aunt Lavinia screeching at her to get out while the family stayed silent, to the day she understood that Harry Potter hadn’t stopped Voldemort, just delayed the fight.</p><p>She’s too old to start now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Think Like A Woman (the Found Family remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [La Reine Noire (lareinenoire)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Putting Away Childish Things](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/134853) by La Reine Noire. 



> A pinch-hit for the FemmeRemix 2015, so I apologise for the sparsity of it and also for not being able to do the 15thC RPF or ASOIAF fic that is the recipient's current interest.

While Remus goes to break the news of Teddy’s birth to the friends of the Order, Andromeda keeps a weather eye on her daughter.

Dora is tired from the birth, although healed well. While there are spells that can fully restore the body, they can only simulate restoration of the mind; and while the process of birth is largely physical, the emotional component is undoubtedly there and undeniable.

So Dora lies in bed, drowsing with Teddy propped up in her arm, sleeping and feeding by turns. She’ll stay there, resting and bonding with the baby, physical contact, breath and blood, heartbeat and hearth; the old ways that the wizarding world hasn’t yet given up – that Meda hasn’t given up, whatever her sisters might think of her, when they think of her at all.

As she stirs the birth-broth in the kitchen of her house – meat and bones boiled thick, to give strength to the feeding mother – Meda thinks of the witches who gave her this recipe and many others in the first days after Dora’s birth. Who were there to offer advice and assistance through those first hard weeks as a young mother. Lacking her own mother’s advice, without her sisters around her to support her, Meda would have been lost and struggling to keep everything together.

Ted was lovely, but he had no knowledge of what to do with her apart from fuss.

Rather like Remus, in that sense.

Still, Remus is willing to do everything within his capabilities to learn what he must do to share the burden of parenthood with Dora. Just as well.

Meda has had her doubts about her daughter’s choice of husband – and not merely because he’s a werewolf. But after the initial panic when they discovered Dora was pregnant – which Meda saw, even if her daughter and husband missed it – Remus has steadied. He is, in fact, determined to learn anything and everything that might make him a better father to his son.

She ladles soup into a bowl, and tries not to think that mere months ago she would have dipped out a second bowl for Ted and nudged him with her hip on the way out of the kitchen. _Dora’s belly has stopped growing; when will yours?_

The soup is gently salted as she carries the bowl through the house. It’s no worse for her tears, although she pauses with the tray hovering in the air to wipe the salt away from her cheeks. Dora has so many things on her mind already; she doesn’t need to deal with her mother’s grief, too.

“Soup, mum?”

“Broth,” she corrects. “It’s good for you and Teddy.”

“Given how much of it I’ll probably be drinking in the next couple of weeks, I sure hope it is,” Dora says, half-smiling as she starts to ease herself up into a sitting position. Teddy rouses and flails a little, reaching for his mum as his hair goes from shabby brown to wheat-gold, and Meda picks up her grandson and rocks him, wondering once again at such tiny fragile life.

“It doesn’t seem quite possible that we made him – me and Remus between us.” Dora says between slurps of broth. “He’s just…perfect.”

“No baby is perfect,” Meda says, automatically, and then winces. She pitched that exactly as her mother had forty years ago and more as they looked down at her new baby cousin Sirius: black-haired, black eyed, and bright-faced. “But he comes pretty close,” she murmurs to herself and her own mum, echoing the words she spoke to her mother then. There’s a moment to feel the pang of loss – the family who disowned her for marrying Ted – for marrying someone who didn’t fit their bill of what was appropriate.

Were there regrets? Yes. Plenty of them.

Would she change what she did, having lived through those regrets? No. Not even knowing how it would end – with her grandson staring up at her with blue eyes already shading to brown, named for his grandfather who was killed by the kind of people her family would have supported without question – _are_ supporting without question.

Traitors to their blood, indeed.

Meda might have forgiven her sisters for Sirius – yes, even Bella; she might have forgiven them the war. She will never forgive them for Ted.

“Mum?”

“Hm?”

Dora hesitates a moment, her mouth pursing in that way she gets when she’s considering whether or not to tell her mum what she’s thinking. It was a common enough look during Dora’s childhood and teens, and Meda learned not to ask – more often than not she didn’t much like the answer. “You’re thinking about Dad again.”

“Not difficult when I’m holding the grandson named for him.” Meda sighs. “This isn’t what I wanted for you and your children, Dora.”

“Well,” Dora comments, “I should hope most parents wouldn’t want a war with their kids’ extinction on the agenda.” She tilts her head sideways. “You sure I can’t persuade you to join the Order?”

It isn’t as though Meda hasn’t considered it. There’s a justice to it: an ancient and noble wizarding house divided, even as the wizarding world has divided. Someone to balance out the scales of Bella and Cissy; a chance to avenge the husband whose only ‘crime’ was to be born of Muggles and to love and be loved by a pure-blooded daughter of the House of Black.

But Andromeda Tonks _née_ Black has been staying out of fights all her life – from the day she decided she would marry Teddy Tonks and her family and their blooded expectations be damned, through the day she realised her family would never again see her as one of them – Uncle Arcturus’ funeral and Aunt Lavinia screeching at her to get out while the family stayed silent, to the day she understood that Harry Potter hadn’t stopped Voldemort, just delayed the fight.

She’s too old to start now.

“Someone needs to stay out of sight and look after Teddy,” she jiggles her grandson in her arms. “Because I really can’t see motherhood slowing you down, Dora.”

“I want a world without Death Eaters and Mouldyvort and this stupidity about blood.” Dora lifts the bowl to her mouth and drinks the rest of the soup. “And Harry’s a good kid - got his heart in the right place. He’ll do what needs to be done. And so will I.”

She puts the bowl back down on the tray, burps with an unrepentant look at her mother for her lack of manners, even in private, and starts pulling pillows behind her. “Okay, kiddo: lunchtime.”

* * *

Months later, after the clean-up and the sorting out and the funerals and the fuss, Meda stands in the house of her ancestors with her infant grandson, clutching the deed Harry Potter signed over to her for Teddy.

 _I don’t need it. I don’t want it. It’s his heritage._ A faint and malicious smile touched the young man’s lips, _And I like the idea of a werewolf’s son and a Muggleborn’s grandson as the inheritor of the noble and ancient house of Black._

Meda rather liked it too.

“Well, Teddy,” she murmurs to the baby grumbling against her shoulder in his sleep. “I guess we’ll do what needs to be done, then.”


End file.
